Quiet Professionals, Noisy Machinery

When Guns are Outlawed, Only Outlaws will have Marriage Proposals

Well, technically, the woman on the left of the double picture here, a Miss S. Dhanya, wasn’t killed by the marriage proposal. She was killed by a sickle, which may be that the first appearance of that archaic agricultural implement (and half-a-communist-symbol) in a WeaponsMan.com story.

Of course, sickles don’t kill people, people kill people, and the killer-type people in this case was the man on the right, one Zahir, who sicced the sickle on the victim after she turned down his marriage proposal.

See, she’d already accepted a proposal from another guy. One who didn’t come to the proposal with a sharp sickle and a Plan B comprising mayhem.

A 23-year-old old woman identified as S Dhanya was hacked to death in India on Wednesday after rejecting a marriage proposal from a 27-year-old mill worker.
The murderer was known to the family and had known Dhanya for more than a year and asked for her hand in marriage. According to India’s NDTV, she rejected him because she was engaged to someone else. The woman “was alone at home when Zahir allegedly entered through the rear door of the house and attacked her with a sickle after she refused her [sic] advances. Her parents had gone out for shopping and had locked the front door, police said.”

Following the attack, the alleged killer – identified only as “Zahir” – attempted to commit suicide by ingesting poison. His attempt to kill himself was unsuccessful, and he was taken to the hospital, where he is currently in the intensive care unit. Police are waiting until he is out of ICU before they arrest him, but they have already registered the murder charge.

While some aspects of this homicide seem uniquely Indian, others are more universal. Relationships and rejections are at the core of cases on the whiteboard of the Homicide or Major Crimes squad in every major metro PD in the USA and probably, the world.

But the Indians do think their situation is unique, and there is that aspect to it.

NDTV points out that attacks like these are becoming increasingly frequent. Last month, NDTV reports, “A 24-year-old teacher, N Francina was clubbed to death inside a church.” Before that, “24-year-old Swathi, employed with software giant Infosys, was hacked to death around 6.30 am on June 24 while waiting to board a train at Nungambakkam Railway Station to her workplace on the city outskirts.”

Violent attacks in India on both men and women, but more predominantly on women, have become more frequent in the past year. Breitbart News reported in March, “Brothers in India burned their sister alive after she married a man in a different caste (social class) in the nation’s most recent honor killing.”

You have to wonder just what is ailing in a culture that a guy responds to a “no, thanks,” with a swinging sickle, and a bunch of brothers express their disapproval of their sister’s marital choices by setting Sis ablaze. Not that our culture is in any position to cast Jovian judgmental jolts at the unworthy masses, teeming somewhere east of Suez.

Hognose: off topic here, but you asked a few days ago about suggestions for future posts.

I routinely see people post something along the lines of ‘Well, in 1776 the second amendment might be useful against a government gone bad, but today no amount of private arms would matter a whit against government tanks/helicopters/jet bombers’.

ISTM that your combination of eloquence and professional background makes you uniquely qualified to discuss that. I’m thinking of a standalone post, so a paragraph about your professional background and the SF perspective on the efficacy of lightly armed resistance movements. The idea would be a self contained discussion, so one could respond to the ‘resistance id futile’ argument with ‘well, here’s what a long time SF guy has to say: link to post’.

It’s a subject I’d sure like to hear your thoughts on, and might be very useful in the larger debate as well.

eh…..I obviously can’t speak for hog (or any others), but it seems to me that anything that *could* be construed as advice/lecture/essay/”what I’d do” is unwise to post. things like that tend to monitored, and why bother tipping your hand? stuff like that would be passed on to folks near and dear only, and even then would be carefully guarded. while something of that nature might benefit a lot of normal folks, it’s REALLY difficult for me to imagine hog, boat guy, shark, or anybody of similar background writing out something like this. you can’t unwrite history on the web.

suffice it to say, if resistance truly was futile, the concepts of FID would be rewritten, im sure.

@Jim: I’m not asking for a ‘how to’; I’m interested in a professional appraisal of the degree to which a robust culture of distributed arms ownership protects against an evil Mr. Big taking over. Imagine that, say, Nixon never resigned and when subsequently impeached he announced that, with a war on and all, it wasn’t time to change presidents. When congress disagrees he issues a decree suspending congress indefinitely and imprisons opposition leaders ‘for the duration of the emergency’. Enough of the police/military go along that his seizure of power isn’t a non-starter. A ‘soft’ revolution (the Orange Rev. in the Ukraine, e.g.) fails when he arrests enough of its leadership. Or whatever – pick your scenario.

Now imagine that happening in relatively well armed societies: the U.S., Switzerland, Finland, vs. more or less disarmed societies, e.g. Britain.

What does someone with an SF background think about the relative chances of El Presidente being deposed across that spectrum of increasingly distributed arms ownership? Importantly, if the odds vary, to what degree will some putative Mr. Big be deterred from trying the takeover in the face of a widely armed citizenry?

Again, lots of people w/o, I think, a military background, seem to take it as inarguably obvious that in modern times lightly armed forces are simply irrelevant when faced with a modern military. I’m interested in hearing the opinion on that of someone who made i his profession to study that question.

Again, not a How To manual, but an assessment of the degree to which distributed arms ownership affects the outcome, all other things being equal.

I am not SF (not even close), but allow me to reframe the argument for you.

The utility of a given tool for any given purpose is just a straw man argument. All this talk about the 2nd Amendment being about stopping tyranny is missing the point almost as bad as the anti-gun crowd crowing about the amendment being solely about hunting and target shooting. It misses the point about why the right exists by confusing what you can use the weapons for with why it is critical they not be prohibited. Weaponry has a deterrent effect on coercive action by governments. It also has leisure and food acquiring uses. But, that is not why it is important that individuals right to keep and bear shall not be infringed.

Self defense is a basic human right! The right to defend ones life is a, if not THE, most important human right there is. Therefore, being able to procure, store, and bear the tools most suited to that end is what is really at issue. If a person is prohibited by the state or some other entity from defending their life, the state is effectively claiming ownership of that person. Weather conferred by God, or by our basic humanity, or where ever human rights come from, we have the right to stop others from hurting or killing us. (Period, Full Stop!)

To the original argument, an armed population certainly is harder to push around than one without arms. This is true even if the entity interesting in doing the pushing is capable of overcoming their resistance. The “tanks and fighter jets against a dude with a shotgun” folks fail to realize something important. Even if a government or other group bent on domination has the ability to crush and armed resistance the cost to do so is higher that it would be for an empty handed group. But, again that is not the point of being able to have arms in the first place. It is a secondary benefit.

Similarly to the hunting and target shooters argument, arms that are suited to personal defense are often useful for hunting and sport. Not all hunting weapons are useful for self defense, and not all self defense tools are useful for hunting. The fact they have some overlap is again a happy secondary feature.

Don’t fall into the hypothetical “how I would do it” trap. Ultimately it does not matter because the 2nd Amendment is bigger than that. Argue for rights on principals that are universal. Most people can understand the need to stop violence being done to themselves or another. Leave the Red Dawn style war gaming for another time.

That would be interesting indeed. Remember though, no “resistance” ever succeeded without substantial outside help. In whatever land we readers find ourselves, I fear we are all in the days of Zedekiah…..the brave men on the walls will not prevail, because there are too many enemies within the gates, and the people and land too polluted, for there to be any remedy other than blood and fire, submission, or evasion. One time, it will be the last, and most spectacular. I’m of the opinion that the stage is being set for that; and provoked insurrection is part of making that happen. Who really holds the initiative? That’s a deep one to ponder. There is a time for everything, and even amidst the desolation The Lord is mighty to preserve and prevail, often by the little and weak things so as to mock the proud and seemingly strong.

Hognose doesn’t cover secret means and methods, but there is already enough buried carefully in his posts and commentariat to stimulate the little grey cells; the more important “why”, which dictates the how, is also hinted at, skirted around, and sometimes trampled roughshod in comments, but I doubt we’ll see diy insurrection tips here…the walls have many ears, of widely varied kinds.

As to .gov’s might in dinky toys….consider that its real power lies in the collective perception and acceptance of power, just like the value of paper money depends upon mostly unspoken yet quasi universal acceptance of its worth. Strategic nukes are only useful against strategic-level targets, and all those tanks, planes and ships need crews, supplies and objectives; it’s why the mall-stabber and train-bomber is currently so effective: he fights in perceptions, aided by his allies in media, and coordinated by….whoever it is that wants all the world at his feet.

No wonder you can’t buy a bottle of drain clearing acid at Home Depot no mo’….

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WeaponsMan is a blog about weapons. Primarily ground combat weapons, primarily small arms and man-portable crew-served weapons. The site owner is a former Special Forces weapons man (MOS 18B, before the 18 series, 11B with Skill Qualification Indicator of S), and you can expect any guest columnists to be similarly qualified.

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